Last of 3 Indiana prison escapees caught

July 23, 2009

INDIANAPOLIS -- The last of three convicts who escaped from the maximum-security Indiana State Prison was captured on Thursday after 11 days on the run, police said.

About 20 members of a U.S. Marshals fugitive task force took convicted murderer Mark Booher into custody around noon at a hotel on the northwest side of Indianapolis, Supervisory Inspector Shannon Robinson said.

"He didn't present any kind of struggle," Robinson said.

Booher and two other inmates escaped July 12 through the underground tunnel system of the prison in Michigan City.

Convicted murderer Charles Smith, of New Castle, was captured the following day about eight miles from the prison in Grand Beach, Mich. Authorities arrested Lance Battreal, who was convicted of rape, on Tuesday at his parents' home in the southern Indiana town of Rockport.

Booher, 46, also from New Castle, about 40 miles east of Indianapolis, was taken to the Indiana Department of Correction intake center in Plainfield, Robinson said.